By Martin H. Levinson

According to the 2022 PDK poll of the public’s attitudes toward public schools, forty-five percent of Americans support arming teachers to prevent school shootings. Proponents say arming teachers would minimize deaths and deter potential attackers from carrying out attacks. That may be true but the fly in the gun chamber is that potential attackers, knowing the pedagogues are packing, would plug the teacher first once they got in the classroom, and if they were successful in immobilizing the instructor they would have a bunch of defenseless children at their mercy. But not if the kids had rods on them.

As a bang-on supporter of the second amendment, a gun-loving-gun-worshipping-life-without-a-gun-is-not-worth-living member of the National Rifle Association, a bullet-hard believer that a good guy with a gun is the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun, and a fellow that knows we live in a country where it’s kill or be killed, I suggest implementing the common-sense, constitutional, concrete notion of arming schoolchildren. The advantage of this idea, over just arming teachers, is that it’s a lot harder to gun down 20 or 30 people in a classroom who have firearms by their sides than a single individual in possession of a weapon. Besides, America has had a long history of young people having guns at school.

In the 18^th century, kids in the colonies brought biscuits and muskets with them to class each day—the biscuits were for eating at lunch, the muskets provided additional provender. In the 19^th century, there were kiddie militias that drilled during gym, holding target practice at recess in the schoolyard. There were also afterschool programs that involved shooting the breeze, killing time, and in winter, when the sun went down early, taking shots in the dark. In both centuries, attackers did not shoot-up schools because if they had tried to they would have been pumped full of lead by the students. It was only in the 20^th century, when kids went to school with sandwiches and apples in their lunchboxes rather than hunting rifles and ammo strapped to their backs, that school shootings became a thing.

To make sure all kids were protected from gun-carrying goons, firearms would be provided youngsters beginning in kindergarten, although a case can be made, based on the recent shooting of a teacher in Virginia by a first grader, that first-grade would be a logical place to start. However, kindergarteners are just as capable as first graders in pulling a trigger and if you staggered their naptimes, there would always be a number of armed-and-awake tykes to take on gung-ho miscreants with malicious intent. And the sooner kids get used to shooting guns, the easier it will be later for them to open fire with their weapons, which is another plus.

Children, like adults, would need to be trained to use firearms and who better to do that than NRA volunteers specially selected to work with and supply incentive and motivation to young gunslingers ready to defend themselves, their schools, and their fellow comrades-in-arms. These NRA helpers would provide role models for gun-toting youth as well as ammunition and membership applications to the juvenile division of the National Rifle Association, an organization that since 1871 has dedicated itself to gun safety, gun propagation, and all-around good gun fun.

If adults can stand their ground and knock off people coming to get them why shouldn’t children be given the same opportunity. It’s ageist to say kids shouldn’t be allowed to bring guns to school, it’s insulting, and it’s downright un-American.

Arm children now!